1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to methods and systems for providing workspace mobility and hoteling. More particularly, methods and systems are provided for managing and providing telephony services to particular individuals whose workspace location can change from time to time.
2. Discussion of Related Art
There are a variety of tools and techniques for managing and providing telephony services in a workplace environment. Organizations have long used private branch exchanges (PBXs) to deploy and maintain telephone service to employees at a particular physical location, for example, a work site such as an office building. By connecting individual phones to the public switched telephone network via a trunk line, the organization could route an individual employee's extension to wherever the employee was located at the work site, and could reroute the extension as appropriate.
However, the PBX is of little use when a user needs telephony services in a location physically distant from the location of the PBX system. Furthermore, the PBX requires too much manual intervention to be efficient when a user frequently moves locations, or when a particular work location, for example, a cubicle, will host a number of different users in the course of a relatively short period of time.
“Hoteling” is a term given to the practice of providing unassigned workspaces that can be reserved or claimed by different users at different times. Specifically, a user may reserve a workspace, such as a cubicle or office, for a particular duration of time. During that time, she may be provided telephony or other custom services at that location. Hoteling thus allows mobile workers to have access to a shared workspace at one or more locations as needed without requiring a dedicated workspace for each mobile worker at each location.